And after seven years of blackness, and despair
And after seven years of blackness, and despair. The long reach to Buenos Aires, and the querulous sea-birds mocking him: On the land is desolation and pettiness and disappointment.... And what is there on the sea? The great whale is dying; the monster who ranged the deep must go because men must have oil to cast up their accounts by the light of it, and women must have whalebone for stays.... The sleek seal with brown gentle eyes must die that harlots shall wear furs.... And there never was a Neptune or a Mannanan mac Lir.... There were only stories from a foolish old book.... The sun shines for a moment on the green waters, and your heart rises.... But remember the blackness of the typhoon, and how the cold left-hand wind rages round the Horn.... And the coral islands have great reefs like knives, and the golden tropics lure to black lethal snakes.... Fool! Fool! We have ranged the clouds, and there is no good-willing God.... There is only coldness and malignant things.... So cried the querulous sea voices, and they tempted him: "All you have known is desolation and vanity. Better to have died a boy while the meadows they were green.... All before you is emptiness," they mocked. And they came nearer: "Behold, the night is black, the ocean is of great depth, immeasurable, the ship plows onward under a quartering breeze. A little step, a little step leeward, a vault over the taffrail as over a little ditch, and there will be peace and rest. Look at the water flow past. No problems there.... God! how close he had been to it, in the seven black years, the long voyage from Liverpool, and the sordid town at the end.... How close! And then Alan Donn, God rest him! had died, and he had gone back to Ireland, and met Granya, and been foolish as a boy in his teens. A shipload of rifles to free Ireland! What a damned fool he had felt when they had simply shooed him away!"
He thought to himself with a little smile thatout of the wisdom of his life had always come sorrow, and out of his foolishness had come joy.... Granya, and peace, and meaning to his life.... A very foolish thing it had been, that expedition.... But he wouldn't have it laughed at, nor laugh at it himself.... Over the mists of the past the thing took glamour.... He had been more moved than he had allowed himself to believe then. And here in his New York drawing-room, remembering the old heroic-comic gesture, and remembering tragedies of material that were glorification of spirit, he thought for an instant he had solved the mystery of Ireland, ... Ireland was a drug.... Out of the gray sweeping stones, and the bogs of red moss and purple water, and from the proud brooding mountains, and the fields green as a green banner, there exhaled some subtle thing that made men lose sense of worldly proportion.... It was in their mothers' milk, a subtle poison. It crept into their veins, and though they might leave Ireland, yet for generations would it persist.... It gave them the gift of laughter, and contempt for physical pain, and an egregious sensitiveness.... So that the world wondered ... their wars were merry wars, and their poetry sobbed, like a bereaved woman.... They threw their lives away recklessly, and a phrase meant much to them....Perhaps they knew that action counted nothing, and emotion all.... Ah, there he was losing himself!
At any rate, Ulster Scot though he was, he didn't regret it—apart even from its bringing him Granya. Perhaps at the news of it, some hard English official might feel a twitch at his heart-strings, and remembering that the Irish were as little children, be kind to some reprobate Celt.... An action had so many antennæ. One never knew where its effects stopped, if ever....
A foolish thing that had brought him joy where wisdom brought him sorrow! Strange. Until then he had been existent, sentient, but never until then alive. Wonder, disillusionment, passion, tragedy, despair. In each of these moods he had had a glimpse, now and then, of an immense universal design, as a bird may have it, and its throat quivering with song, or as a salmon may have it, and he flinging himself tremendously over a weir. He knew it, as a tree knows when the gentle rains of April come. But that he existed, as an entity apart from trees, from salmon, and from birds, he had not known until Granya, broken, had crept weeping into his arms....
"Give me strength, Shane, for God's sake. Give me strength, or I die!"
And somewhere, out of something, some esoteric, where he had plucked strength and given it to her, and he knew it wasn't from his body, or from his mind, or his spirit even, he had given it. He had, from some tremendous storehouse, got life for her, got peace, so that she fluttered like a pigeon and sighed and grew calm.... And in that moment he knew he was alive.
He tried to figure it to himself in terms of concrete things, and he said: "If I were a racing-boat now, I would decide how to make a certain buoy, and my mind would figure how to get there, what tack to make, the exact moment of breaking out the spinnaker rounding the mark. Perhaps my mind is nothing, something I use just now, as I use my body. For the hand on the rudder is not I. It is something I am using to hold that rudder. As I might lash it with a rope, if I were so minded. And my eyes are just something I use. They are just like the indicators on the stays; they and the indicators are one, to tell me how the wind shifts. All that is not I. It is something I use. Perhaps even my mind is something I use, as I use my hands. But somewhere, somewhere within me, is I."
And a great sense of exaltation and wonder and dignity swept through every fiber of him at the thought of this: new-born he was, clean asa trout, naked as a knife, strong as the sea. He was one of the lords of the kindly trees, masters of the pretty flowers: the little animals of God were given him, it being known he would not abuse the gift.... And though lightning should strike him yet he would not die, but put off his body like a rent garment.... And though he were to meet the savage bear in the forest, and have no means of conquering it, yet were he to become aware of this entity of life in him, he would smile at the thought of physical danger, and the great furry thing would recognize that dignity and be abashed.... And there was no more wonder, or mystery, or fear, only beauty.... The moon was not any more a mystery, but a place to be trodden one day, were his place to be there.... And the furthest star was no further than the further island on terrestrial seas; one day he would reach that star, somehow, as now he could the furthest island with head and hand.... Though death should smite his body he would not die.
A strange thing was this, that Granya had always known this life. It was so certain to herthat it was no more a wonder than rain is, or sunshine, or the rising of the moon....
He had spoken of it to her one evening in the dusk. She had smiled, her grave beautiful smile.
"Of course I know, Shane. I always knew."
"But how did you know, Granya?"
"I think," she said, "I think all good women know, Shane. Men are so complete, so welded. Mind and body seem to be themselves; the body and mind function so that one doesn't see that there is anything within that directs them. They are compact. But a woman is diffuse, Shane. Her mind is not a man's mind; it is a thing she can use when she wants to and then forget.... When women sit and think, you know, they aren't thinking. They are feeling, Shane. It comes like a little wind. There may be a place by the sea-shore, sparse heather and sandy dunes, and the little waves come chiming, and the curlew calls. And you sit. And a very strange peace comes to you, so that in a low soft voice you sing a verse of song.... Or it may come on the cold winds of winter, through the ascetic trees.... But women are always cognizant of God.... Even bad women, Shane, who mistake the Unknown God for the true.... And a woman is very much apart from her body. Itis just a nuisance at times, or at times a thing of beauty, or at times a thing one expresses something with, something that is too deep for words, as with a violin. And to some it is a curse.... But a body is always apart from one, and a mind is, too.... Shane, you have seen very beautiful old women.... Women with a beauty that is like a flame that does not burn, that have a light within them somewhere ... that is not of the mind or of the body ... that is of these things worn thin so that they themselves show.... See, heart?"
"But Granya, why must a man find out, and a woman know?"
"Shane of my heart, because it is necessary to women that they may live. A man can live without knowing God, as blind men live without ever seeing the moon. For they have minds, Shane, pursuits—the amassing of money, the little light of fame, that is only a vanity—not real.... But Shane, no matter how hard a man has to work, a woman has more terrible things.... There is no man on earth can understand the bearing of children.... And there is no man, were he to think of it, try to know, but would rather die than submit to what he thinks that terror.... And yet, Shane, it is not somuch.... After a little agony, when one goes into the dark, olive valley, and strength seems to go from you in great waves, until you are robbed of strength as a man may be robbed of blood.... Then one goes out of one's self and gets it.... The beauty in the face of young mothers, of brides. That is not body or mind, Shane, that is their selves. This was the Eleusinian mystery, Shane, that women know that God lives, and that they cannot die....
"See, Shane, the stars are out. The dew is falling. And on the morrow you must be afoot early. Shall we go in?"
Once, before Alan Oge was born, a wave of panic swept over him, and he caught her hand and looked at her:
"What is it, Shane?"
"If—if you should die—"
"I shall not die, Shane. I know. I shall not die."
"But how do you know?"
"I just know, Shane. That's all."
"O Granya, it seems very terrible, that one day one of us should die."
"Dear Shane, it is not very terrible. If I should die, my heart, I should know I would nothave long to wait. And I should be with you, Shane, even dead, when I could.... And after days of trouble suddenly one morning you would know you had had a good night's sleep, and that would be because I had come to you in the night and had kissed you, and laid a dim hand on you.... And sometimes, in difficulties, you would feel a sudden rush of strength, and that would be because I was beside you ... dear heart, dear Shane."
"I am so much older, Granya. I shall be the first to die."
"If you are the first to go, Shane, I shall be like some wife of the Crusades, of an old time when a dream meant more than a pocketful of money ... and men were glad to go, and women glad to send them. I shall sit by my fire, and when you come I shall talk to you in my heart ... saying little foolish sweet things.... And when I need you, I shall go out into the soft night, and call, and you will hear my voice in the Milky Way ... and God will let you come ... my darling...."
"Granya!"
"And maybe—sweet, sweet thought—He will let us go together...."
Here was a great fact, that he lived, but with the fact came a problem: Why? If within him there existed this sentient, supple, strong thing, and it did exist, for what end was it designed? It was not enough to have faith, to know one lived to save one's soul.... That was selfish, and selfishness was an unpardonable thing, the sin against the Holy Spirit. That has ordained there should be one occult purpose.... No, everything had a reason.... The sheltering trees, the ocean from whose womb came the great clouds that nurtured the green grass: the winds that were like gigantic brooms. The wise and the good labored, and never shirked.... Each man must give according to his station, the strong man of strength, the wise one of wisdom; the one who knew beauty must give it somehow, not huddle it like a miser's hoard.... All men must work; that was as natural an instinct as the law that men must eat: and work did not mean grinding, but justifying one's existence fully.... None may hold back, for that is ignoble, and all that is ignoble dies, dies andis used again.... The murderer's dead body may nurture a green bay-tree, such beautiful economy nature has.... And it seemed to him that the souls of dark men were used, too, but used as negations, and that was death.... Perhaps they provided the sinister thunderstorms, the terrible typhoon, the cold polar breezes, the storms off the Horn.... They might be the counterpoint of nature's harmony.... But this was going past knowledge, and past knowledge of heart and head one must not go.... But of one thing he was certain; all that is ignoble dies....
He had always known from the time he was a young boy that man must do something.... It was not sufficient to make a little money and sit down and spend it, as a dog finds a bone and gnaws it, or buries it, in a solitary place.... For a long time he had thought it sufficient to do the little commerce of the world.... But that was not sufficient.... In Buenos Aires he had felt ridiculous, as a giant might feel ridiculous carrying little stones for the making of a grocer's house.... Ashamed, a little resentful! He was like a dumb paralytic with flaming words in his heart and brain, and he could not write them, not even speak them aloud....
But all his life this had worried him, the getting of work to do. And when he came to America with Granya he had come with great plans. Ships and ship-building were the only things he knew, and he had thought with others that the great clipper days might be revived. Iron steamships were grasping the swift commerce of the world, but there were errands great wooden ships under skysails might yet be supreme in, the grain trade of San Francisco, for instance. And it might be possible, so he had dreamed, that once more the great pre-war clippers should be the pride of the new idealistic commonwealth ... and what had come from his hand? A half-dozen three-masted schooners, and not very good schooners either, being too long in the hull for strength.... And nobody seemed to care.... From Belfast and the Clyde, iron boats swarmed like flies.... And people were impatient.... They did not care to wait if a ship were blown from her course.... They wanted ships on time.... People had laughed at him, calling him crazy, and saying he was trying to stem progress.... And then they had done worse.... They had smiled and said it was a hobby of his.... He knew it was no use. He quit.... And Granya had been very tender.
"You mustn't mind, Shane. It was very lovely of you to dream and act.... But it is not intended. Don't take it to heart, dearest."
"All my life, Granya, I have been trying to do something, and I always fail."
"Dear Shane, you never fail. The success is in yourself, not outside of yourself. That is all."
"Ah, yes, Granya, but that is not enough. That seems so selfish. So many men have done so much for the world, and I have done nothing. Even the old charwoman on her knees scrubbing floors has done more. She has given her best, and her best has been useful."
"But, Shane, you must wait. Have patience."
"I am old, Granya, and have done nothing."
"Wait, Shane, wait. I am going to dim the light, and blur all these things around us, and tell you a secret thought has been deep in my heart for years. There will be we two just in the room—absolute. And come nearer the fire, dear Shane, where I can just see where your hand is, and put my hand on it when the thought makes me feel like a child in a great wood.... Shane....
"You know your charts, the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer yourship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross ... and the little stars you have no names for, but mark them on your chart with quaint Greek letters.... Our little world is so little, so pathetically little in this immensity.... It is as though we were living on the smallest of islands, like some of the islands you have known and you on board ship following the moon down the West—Saba, where the Dutch are in the Caribbean, or Grenada, the very little island.... And on that island they know only vaguely that such great lands as Africa and Europe and Asia are.... They don't know it from experience.... But Peking of the bells exists, and stately Madrid, and Paris that is a blaze of light, and London where the fog rolls inland from the sea.... Heart of my heart, how terrible it is that cannot, will not see, understand.... And they say: Well, we don't see it. Here we were born and here we die.... And they say: Show us somebody who has been there.... They forget how long is the journey and how a man may have affairs in the crowning cities.... Dearest, I am losing myself, but I know.
"And this is what I want to tell you, Shane,that when you die—oh, such an ugly word that is, Shane, for the bud bursting into flower—when it is your time to leave here, Shane, there will be a place for you, not idleness at all.... All the stars, Shane, the valleys of the moon.... There is work, Shane dear. Nothing is perfect, else there should be no reason for life. There must be stars that are old, as Dublin is old, and need vitality.... There must be stars that are young and cruel, as this city is young and cruel, and need sweet strength.... But I am very presumptuous, Shane, to try and fathom the Great Master's plan.... It is so colorless—oh, there is no word or symbol for it, Shane.... But there is a Great Master and there is a Plan....
"Heart, I tell you this, showing all my weakness of thought. You know it is the truth, too.... But I tell you I know, so that our two selves' knowing may make it a little stronger in us....
"O Shane, I have no logic, but I know.... And all the logicians in the world could not shame me to myself. All the reason in the world could not shake me. It would be artillery shot against the wind.... A star is a promise to me, Shane, and the wind a token, and the new moon just a pleasant occurrence, like the coming of spring....
"Shane, I know all this. I know it not formyself but for you.... I know three things: I know God lives, I know I love you, I know we shall not die.... I love you, Shane, and there is no shame on me telling it to you, for you are as my heart and I am as yours.... When I see you at times there comes over me a sweetness from head to foot, and at times when I see you, a great dignity comes to me, because you love me, and your love is good.... I know there is a place in the coming days, and I know I shall be with you, wherever you go....
"Here in this dim room, Shane, I know these things. Outside is the world, that is forgetting or that doesn't care, or will not see. Here in this dim room, with the red of the fire turning to a gentle yellow, I know it better than the people in churches, that kindly God lives, that I love you, Shane, and that we shall not die...."
It seemed to him that he must have been in reverie for ages, so much had he thought sitting there, so much felt.... He had been like a gull poised on the wing, and now he dropped gently to the calm waters.... New York to-day, andin two weeks Antrim, and then a rest.... And then wider spaces than he had ever known, greater adventure.... A day would come when he would be called, as though some one had said: Shane Campbell! and then a gesture that made a horse stumble, or a flaw of wind that would turn over a boat.... Click!...
And it seemed to him that it would be not only sweeter, but wiser to die in Antrim.... New York was no place for a man like him to die. For an old man, weary with life's work, there would be gentle hands, and soft caring, and guidance for tired eyes.... But for a man young spiritually, strong, there would be no coddling.... He would be expected to jump forward at the call.... And to go through the maze of smoke and dust, and the evil jungles of the air one sensed in a great city would be—waste of time and energy.... In Antrim when the call would come there would be the clear high air, the friendly glens, the great encouraging mountains, and the Moyle laughing in the moonlight: Don't be embarrassed! Don't be afraid!
Above, he heard a door shut. There was no longer the patter of the boys' feet on the floor, nor the drag of the maid's shoes, but Granya's firm light step he could sense somehow, and then came a little sound to him, that he knew was herdropping to her knees by Alan Beg's bed, while she recited for him, taught him, the great prayer.... Shane bowed his head in reverence.... He could see the dim beauty of her face, her great trusting eyes, her sweet hands.... Almost could he hear her voice, so close was she in his heart....
"Our Father, ..."
He could see the symbols that were in her mind, because they were in his too, the gentle pictures that translated the thought these words evoked: the great majestic figure with the strong hands and gentle eyes, the eyes that smiled when colts gamboled, or a rabbit flashed across the grass, that loved the beauty of the garden when He walked in it at the close of day. One felt Him now and then as He went through His smallest world, perhaps in the evening when the crickets sang, perhaps over the moonlit waters, or with the little winds of dawn.... Such strength and kindliness, and the majestic eyes were troubled; for, sympathetic toward the wayward, the bothered, the weak.... They only hardenedwith the promise of terror for the hypocrite, the traitor, for those who devoured widows' houses....
"Who art in heaven, ..."
He smiled to himself at the thought of heaven. There was where one's fancy was free, to realize all the sweet desires of what was good in one.... To those who deserved it God would not begrudge His heaven.... A quiet place, Shane thought, a hushed place, a place of rest.... Whither one might go to realize again all the beauty one had ever known.... All that one had held sweet and wonderful would be there—they had not died.... A white magic would bring back the laughter of babies, and kisses gently given ... and all estrangements of friends and lovers would be eased there, and they would be brought together in a magical trysting-place, and there would be no unharmony.... All the horses one had ever loved would take shape in the air, with necks stretched and whinnying recognition.... All the great ships one had wondered at would appear when called, their spread of snowy canvas, their tapering spars.... All the dogs one had had would be there ... their yelps of joy, their sweet brown eyes, their ears up, their tails wagging ... all the dogs would be there!
"Hallowed be Thy name ..."
The head must bow there. The name evoked a thought, and the thought was ineffable, such glory and sweetness and strength it had.... Names brought pictures. When the word "Helen" was uttered, one saw the burned towers of Troy.... And "Venice," massive shadows and great moonlit waters.... And Genghis Khan brought the riot of galloping horses and the Tartar blades a-flash.... Such power great words had, and this was the greatest word, so great as to be terrible, and not to be mentioned by petty men, who cheapen with their grudging tongues.... No picture there, but some great anthem of the stars.... Not as yet could our ears hear it.... Nor would they ever hear it, if we had not reverence.
"Thy kingdom come ..."
Some immense plan existed, which human mind could never see. No practical wisdom could ever grasp. Were all the sum of practical wisdom gathered in a little room, and infused with spirit until it burst the four walls of the world, yet it might not grasp it.... Yet all things worked that this plan should come to fruition. The stars rolled in their courses. The great winds came. There fell the rain of April and the soft December snow.... And the kingdom was a goodkingdom, for nothing evil conquered ever.... It died and was eliminated, and when it was all as nothing then might the kingdom come ... no arbitrary blowing of Gabriel's trumpet, but that foremost sweetness that comes from the west wind....
"Thy will be done on earth ..."
It was always done on earth, but the ignoble, the inglorious, the small put their petty obstacles in its way, and delayed the coming of the kingdom.... Men grew engrossed in their affairs, grew self-sufficient. A little money in their pockets, and God was forgotten. A little more and they despised their fellow-men, and hatred arose. And evil wars came, and years were lost.... Cunning men put the emotions, the ideals, the actions of glorious men up for barter.... And the men who were tricked brooded.... And the cunning men took the land and the waters and the light, and worked tortuously until they could sell them at a price.... And the things God had made for his people were the means to procure these dark folk wine and mistresses and the state of kings.... Such was not the doing of the Will.... But one day it would be worked out by men how these things could not ever again be.... The slow certain coming of the kingdom....
"As it is in heaven ..."
From the green resting-place came all that was sweet and harmonious, the shape of clouds, the high spirit of horses, the loyalty of dogs, the graceful movement swans have, and the song of the lesser birds. From that green resting-place came the gold of the gorse, and the sweet line of trees, and the purple the heather has—the loved heather. Thence came the word that set the friendly moon on high, and put out the white beauty of the young and alternated sunshine with the rains of spring. All was done there according to wisdom and beauty.
"Give us this day our daily bread ..."
That was no whine for the prisoner's dole. That was the simplicity of asking that the moon and the sun still rise. Give beauty to women, and grace to children, and songs for poets to sing. Let not the green tree wither, but send it rain. And give a little softness to the hearts of callous men. And remind us that widows live, and that there are fatherless. Teach us how to heal sickly children, and be easy on horses. And give us gentleness. And when roses grow on the walls in June, put a bud in our hearts....
"And forgive us our trespasses ..."
The picture that came into Shane's mind then was not the picture of an abased man beating hisbreast, but the thought of a mature man clanging through the halls of heaven past every guard until he came where wisdom and beauty was, and standing and throwing back his head: "I have done wrong," he would say, "rotten wrong, and I'm wretched about it." And there would be an answer: "You did right to come."
"As we forgive those who trespass against us ..."
Ah! That was hard! That was the most difficult thing in the world, the Celt in Shane knew. The horripilation of the skin, the twitching nostrils, the feeling for the knife in the armpit.... When one was young, the careless word, the savage blow, the brooding feud.... But men grew better with the increase of the years, and with maturity came the sense that not every one could insult or hurt a man. The jibes and trespasses of petty people meant so little, and one sensed the Destiny, the strange veiled One, balanced in His own wise time the evil done a man with unexpected good.... One grew wiser even yet with the years and knew that a great wrong was outside one's personal jurisdiction.... One had to leave that to the broad justice of the High God.... One could appeal there, as with the oldcri de haroof Norman low....Haro! haro! A l'aide, mon prince. On me fait tort!Hither! Hither! Help me, my king; one dropped on one's knees in the market-place: I am being injured overmuch! And it was the prince's duty to help feal men.... To forgive trespasses—only one understood in maturity, one grew to it.... The strong and wise were the meek, not the weaklings ... the men who knew that justice was absolute ... the men with the calm eyes and the grim smile, they were the terrible meek....
"And lead us not into temptation ..."
A little cry of humility that was, a very human reminder to the Only Perfect One that we in this very small world were weak. Work we had to do, destinies to fulfil, but under weakness, or from false strength, one might wander from our appointed path.... The power of office, let it breed arrogance ... the sense of money, let it not bring smug callousness.... And the singers of the world be proud only of the trust, but humble in themselves as the birds are among the trees.... And let not strength have contempt, but gentleness....
"But deliver us from all evil ..."
There were dark places in the world, and one needed guidance there, protection.... From Satan, who is not a spirit, but a horrible miasma, that floats in little vapors here and there, whenthe clean winds are resting ... from the warm inviting and evil jungle where one might seek relief in distress, or having been over-long in the high air ... from the twisted souls of dark men and women who seek to sully as with writhing piteous hands ... from deep sinister pools we know are thick with horror but feel charmed toward, as one feels like plunging to death from the summit of some building terribly high.... From these, Lord God, deliver us!
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
"For ever and ever."